Tag: quirks

March 6, 2019– Character sketches are essential to writing because characters are the people in your book that your readers care about the most! If you don’t have a strong, character-driven story, chances are that people won’t continue to read your work. While writing, authors try and develop characters that readers can relate to. We want characters with real-world struggles of the human condition that intertwine us and make us comrades in this life. As readers, we want to look at a character and see parts of ourselves.

So what exactly is a character sketch? A character sketch is simply writing down everything that you need to know about a character from what their favourite food is to what motivates them. It may sound silly, but I always encourage my authors to write down absolutely EVERYTHING about their characters even the stuff that won’t make it into the book, because knowing their character intimately allows their quirks and personality traits to bleed into their writing. For example, Jenna may hate spaghetti, but the reason behind it may be because it was her abusive ex-husband’s favourite dish.

Let’s elaborate and use Jenna as a character sketch:

32 years old

divorced

no children but two pit bull dogs

Aquarius

loves old movies

hates spaghetti

favourite food is roast beef

tall 5’8

brown eyes and blonde hair from a bottle

second born of three children (Older brother, her, younger brother)

parents are dead

biggest fear is being alone

listens to opera music but only while in the shower

a non-reader other than gossip rags

spare time is used to scour antique shops

mid-level income

American Italian

biggest goal in her life is to find true love after four failed attempts

I think that’s enough examples and you guys get the point! So, where does this information come in handy? Let’s use this to create a scene.

Jenna threw her keys into the dish on the counter. She scoured her brother’s almost bare fridge for anything edible but the only thing left was day-old spaghetti. She chucked the pasta in the trash with such force that the container burst open and some noodles stuck to the wall. Memories of her cheating ex-husband came barrelling to the surface as she held back tears. It was his favourite meal and the first meal they shared as husband and wife. The cold, stringy pasta was a horrible reminder of the man who betrayed her trust and slept with her best friend.

How in the world did we get all of this from spaghetti? See what I mean? This was going out on a ledge, but we must remember that people have their reasons for everything that they do or don’t do. They don’t do, or like, or hate things for no reason, there is always an explanation.

So, I hope you’ll take the time to sketch your characters! It will make a world of difference in your writing. X LLB

October 24, 2018– Being friends with an author has its perks; coffee shop visits, visits to bookstores together, talking books, and of course getting the inside track on what we’re working on (if you care) are the good things. Let’s talk about the downfalls to being friends with an author.

We will put you in a book. Whether directly or indirectly, we will put you or a piece of you in a book. We can’t help it. Little personality quirks, funny superstitions, physical traits all have to come from somewhere and being an author means that we choose those who we are closest to write about. Also, if you piss us off, we will kill you…figuratively.

We are forgetful. Yes, we are a forgetful bunch, but not because we mean to be, but because we remember the important things. We may forget the anniversary of our friendship, but we’ll never forget that time when we made you laugh so hard that you spit your drink out. We won’t forget the sparkle in your eye when you tell a joke, but we will forget that you butchered the punchline. We will forget what you were wearing last week to the movies, but we won’t forget the single tear we saw you shed when the main character died. We can’t remember everything, but we never forget the important things.

We are scattered. We change directions from one second to the next and sometimes the conversations we have with the characters in our head come out when we’re talking to you. Our desks are a mess, we switch ideas in the middle of things, we are absent-minded and can never seem to find a pen. We lose things including our train of thought, but we are among the most disciplined people you will ever come across; how could we ever finish writing multiple novels if we weren’t? How could we possibly sit our ass in the chair and not get up until we’re finished if we weren’t? We’re scattered and we’re apologetic for it. We can’t stop the noise in our head.

So, if you’re friends with an author, consider yourself fortunate, because we don’t have a lot of friends typically and we keep the ones we have, close. X LLB

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